


o solitude of longing

by accessdenied



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Introspection, Mass Effect 2, Quarians (Mass Effect), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accessdenied/pseuds/accessdenied
Summary: Tali keeps to herself on the Normandy SR-2.
Kudos: 2





	o solitude of longing

**Author's Note:**

> hey it's me morgan accessdenied and you can pry these pretentious fic titles out of my cold dead hands 
> 
> so i banged this out on my phone at three in the morning a few weeks ago, then decided to tighten it up a little. one of these days i'll get my shit together and post my enormous infodump of ME worldbuilding headcanons but all you need to know here is that: High Rannochian is the modern name for the now-incoherent jumble of languages that made their way off the quarian homeworld, preserved in phrases like keelah se'lai. also my shepard is nonbinary because if i wanted to roleplay a cis person i'd go outside
> 
> the quarian song described here isn't based on any real songs. i suppose i'm imagining a similar vibe to [this](https://zachbeever.bandcamp.com/track/golden-leaves)?
> 
> set in ME2, after Tali's recruitment but well before her loyalty mission

It's surprisingly easy to feel lonely in the Fleet. Cold, too, if you don't reach out to your shipmates, make them your family by more than just default. If you spend too much time alone with the stars. There's a word for that--something like _void-drunk_ , _steps-forsaken_ \--only it sounds more poetic in High Rannochian, almost polite when others whisper it behind your back. It's derived from one of the rare quarian songs that are solos, one of the rare quarian songs that have never been sampled or remixed or translated into their living language.

In it, a woman of indeterminate age wakes before dusk, before the rest of her caravan, and for reasons she can't name even to herself turns from their camp and walks deeper into the desert carrying no water, no food, no tools of navigation or defense. First, the glow of the dying sunset fades, and she is left with only the wind. Then, the rush of the wind fades, and she is left with only the _shff shff shff_ of her steady footsteps through loose sand. Then, even that fades, and she is left with only the enormous bowl of uncountable stars in a clear sky bound by shifting dunes that hold no landmarks. It is a night that never ends, and a throat that never cracks and a stomach that never hollows and feet that never ache, and the song fades with the subject standing alone, nowhere in particular, her gaze lifted to the infinite dark.

Like most songs in High Rannochian that are truly old and not just adopting the cadence of age, this one has been analyzed down to the exact resonant frequencies of the now-extinct material traditionally used to make the body of one of the background instruments. It's a subject of almost morbid fascination, sometimes bordering on obsession, among those who study music or society or life on the pre-exile homeworld. Dozens of songs in High Rannochian describe a walking trail, from joyous dances of returning to one's family to solemn marching dirges as one journeys to the ancestral shrine to perform funeral rites. The act of traveling along a path forms the bones of a lot of seemingly unrelated metaphors, in High Rannochian and Modern Fleet alike.

There's a popular hypothesis among quarian psychologists that the tension between the necessity of movement to seek scarce resources and the necessity of stillness to conserve energy was one of the deepest challenges that shaped the minds and instincts of the species throughout their evolution. Most people tend to share an equal amount of subconscious discomfort with waiting and with meandering. On the ancient deserts of Rannoch, both spelled danger. When you walk, you must have both a destination and a road, or else the sand will swallow all trace of your existence.

The subject of this song has neither. She has neither duty to her family nor the comfort of joining her ancestors. She abandons life yet does not die.

The score is slow and peaceful and disquieting, made more disquieting because there is no narrative or musical resolution. There is no final line that explains what happens to her, or why the song was written, or what lesson the listener is meant to learn. It ends with a single soft note of a stringed instrument plucked once and left to echo naturally into silence. So many things salvaged from the homeworld have been partially lost but this song is not one of them; a copy has been found that dates back to before the geth uprising, in an outdated file format but still intact. The ending that echoes through Tali's head now is the ending intended by the original composer, whoever they were.

Tali never took much notice of this song until her Pilgrimage crossed paths with Commander Shepard and she was swept up in xyr wake. She listened to it when she couldn't sleep on the SR-1 for that small persistent voice inside that wondered if she was doing this all wrong, and she would sit beside a window to watch the stars shift and shade and stretch as the ship traveled faster than their light could follow. And then it was the only thing that seemed capable of expressing how she felt after Shepard's death, after the raw howling grief had faded to a dull ache and a determination not to disappoint xyr memory.

Shepard is more... jagged, now, around the edges. Not like broken glass but like a serrated knife, there's... teeth, and distance, like xe was remade for tearing into the world and xe's trying not to do so. Xe treated Veetor with kindness and saved Reegar's life but xe moves through this ship with a hard purpose where the old Normandy held ease and confidence and more than a little cockiness. The SR-2 is a cage in the shape of freedom and Shepard never forgets that.

Now, here, Tali listens to the old song and watches the lights and billows of coolant play across the silvered surface of the ship's AI core. Even through her tinted faceplate it's bright enough that her eyes sting and beg for sleep, but she can't seem to look away or stop listening. The souls lost on Haestrom pin her in place.

If Tali were on a quarian vessel, the two engineers that share this deck would whisper about this new habit of hers. If there were another quarian aboard this vessel, she and them might whisper to each other about Shepard. Tali knows what she ought to do. She ought to take Shepard aside, name xem as family, say, please, come back to us, I don't want to lose you to the stars.

She hasn't, because she knows what else she ought to do: reach out to her shipmates, name them as family. Not the Cerberus ones, probably not, but Dr. Chakwas, Garrus, Joker. Grunt, perhaps, and Kasumi and Thane and Mordin (and Samara does not want a family and Jack does not even want acknowledgment and she can understand what pushes someone to such an extreme).

It's what she ought to do, but the words stick in her throat. How can she ask Shepard not to get lost when she herself is wandering in all ways but the most literal?

It's easy to feel lonely. Cold, too. The final note fades, and Tali folds her arms on the railing that overlooks the AI core and clicks repeat.


End file.
